American singer of Country Western and pop, recording artist and actor on TV and in films. He was the winner of five Grammy’s, progressing to host the “Summer Brothers Smothers Show” in 1968. His songs include “Gentle on My Mind” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” His acting career consisted mainly of westerns, and he played across from noted actors.
Campbell was one of 12 children born to sharecropper parents in Billstown, Arkansas during the depression. He left home at 14 with his guitar and began playing clubs around the west.
At age 17, he married his pregnant 15-year-old girlfriend, Diane Kirk, divorcing her in 1959. His next marriage was to16-year-old Billie Jean Nunley, in that same year. They moved to Los Angeles, where he earned a reputation as a top guitar player, doing backup for Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys. After he divorced Nunley in 1976, his life descended into the dangerous world of whiskey, sometimes under-the-influence while performing on stage.
His lifestyle became crazier when he started an affair with Sarah Davis, Mac Davis estranged wife. They married in 1976, but Sarah left him along with their son Dillon in 1982. Campbell’s cocaine-filled romance with country singer Tanya Tucker began in 1980. Tucker slapped a $3 million-dollar lawsuit on Campbell, claiming that he abused her. Campbell’s 6’1, 162 lb. frame was beginning to reveal his drug addiction to the public.
His life started to turn around when he met Kimberly Woollen, a Radio City Music Hall dancer, on a blind date in 1981. Campbell admits to falling asleep drunk in a bathtub, when Kim had to check to see he wasn’t drowning. They married the next year, beginning a new life as dedicated Christians.
Campbell enjoys golfing, and finished an autobiography called “Rhinestone Cowboy.” He opened the Glen Helen Good Time Theater in Branson, Missouri and shares a spacious, Spanish style mansion in Phoenix with his wife Kim and their children.
On 24 November 2003, the singer was arrested for a hit and run car collision and “extreme drunken behaviour” and taken into custody in Phoenix, AZ. He became enraged while in custody and kicked an officer, and his mood changed dramatically from belligerence to breaking out in song and back to belligerence.
Campbell is an evangelical Christian and says he forgot that the anti-anxiety medication he was taking shouldn?t be mixed with alcohol. On 10 May 2004 he pleaded guilty to extreme drunk driving. On 15 June 2004 he received his sentence of 10 days in jail, a $900 fine and a two-year probation term and his jail term began on 1 July 2004.
On 22 June 2011 he announced that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease the previous January. He released “Ghost on the Canvas,” his final album on 30 August 2011.
Campbell died of Alzheimer’s disease in Nashville, Tennessee, on 8 August 2017 at the age of 81.
Link to Wikipedia biography